Deformed
by Protector23
Summary: If Cordelia hadn't had the opportunity to kill Lilah, Angelus would have done it for her.


I am deformed. And I am ugly. And these are crimes for which the world show little pity. It's pathetic how many times one can hear that song being played in their head without conscious consent. She used to hum it to herself while dressing in the morning, on days that he pretended to be asleep to watch her shlump to the office for her 7:30 meeting. Wesley hadn't noticed any significance or order in the tune until he realized it was always the same song and she always stopped at the same place. It took some focus to bring back a vaguely familiar lullaby, and curiosity settled in its place when he recalled the release date of the film from which it derived was in 1996. What was Lilah doing watching Disney films?

Perhaps there was a nephew or young cousin or even neighbor's kids to explain, but he didn't see her willingly being near children unless Wolfram & Hart required the errand. It was a puzzle that he would likely never solve, so he left well enough alone. He didn't care about her enough to ask.

Wesley's stern brow hadn't shifted for hours until that confession...or lie...or defense came to mind. He didn't care about her. Guilted memories of brushing her off, slamming her down, putting her in her place piled atop each other in a sea he wanted to drown in.

"I wasn't thinking about you when you were here."

"You didn't love me, you were incapable of doing so."

"When did you trade your soul to Wolfram & Hart for your obnoxious salary and benefits?"

"Are you very curious to find out? I could happily slit your throat in ten seconds and finish my drink in peace."

"You don't have anywhere to go, do you?"

"I can't think of many things more pathetic than you."

"This 'relationship'- if that's what you want to call it- was never about you. It's about a woman I could actually love."

"You're alone and will always be alone."

"In my mind, you could have died years ago. It would've spared me a lot of trouble."

It stung to hear himself, and broke him to see her uncommon expressions. For the few moments he had seen her walls collapse, her face drop, watch her react to the knots surely forming in her stomach, if even for a moment before they snapped back into place, it was in those countless times he insulted her. Wesley wished he could take them all back. But what would that have done for him? What else could he have done with her? This was Lilah Morgan, not a regular human being with free will and feelings. She was a slave to her employer and the mission to battle evil was still heavy in his heart.

"Wesley?" a mousy voice called from the doorway of his room.

He didn't turn, didn't move. His thoughts were on the dead body in the basement and weren't leaving the subject until he was good and ready.

"Look, I'm sorry about what happened. I mean, I don't understand it with her being, you know, the evil bitch-queen lawyer of Wolfram & Hart, but I'm sorry that it made you sad." Fred's voice swam gently to the place behind his chair as she spoke. He felt a small hand lay upon his shoulder, "Wesley?"

He still didn't speak, he didn't have anything to say. After a few minutes of silence Fred turned to leave him with his thoughts. The words found their way to the surface without him thinking to stop them, "Do you know what she felt?"

Fred stopped halfway to the door and saw him rise to his feet from above the rim of her red glasses. She didn't know whether to answer and drew into herself as the pain in his eyes began to scare her, "...n-no."

"Well let's think about it for a moment. Let's go back to Lilah Morgan's last hour of life and try to recreate what she must have felt," he snapped. Wesley saw Fred asking for him to stop with that timid gaze, but she had to hear this. "Let's start with Cordelia being shot. She's not mortally injured, but her leg was soon after torn off and used to knock her out.

"'You have ten seconds to run!' Angelus shouts to her, giving her just enough time to panic. For her heart-rate to rise, for the infected existing injury to begin bleeding as she ran for her life. Lilah wasn't the type to give up, Fred, so she ran up five flights of stairs to retreat into a sixth floor hotel room and wait for him to follow her scent. She may have evaded him once or twice, but he caught up to her eventually. When he did, according to my autopsy, the first thing he did was tie her hands to perhaps a chair or a bed and slowly rip off each one of her finger nails. And once those were gotten rid of, he crushed each of her fingers and broke her wrists.

"Now, Lilah- evil bitch-queen lawyer as you so delicately put it- has no way to fight him off. If science serves me correctly, about half an hour later Angelus skillfully dislocated and twice broke her pelvic bone, one break for each illiac crest to match the two broken femurs. Tell me, Winifred, can you guess why he might do this?"

He gave her no opportunity to answer, "So that when he brutally raped her, she wouldn't struggle in the face of unbearable pain he undoubtedly delivered to her. Knowing Angelus, I would guess that he went as rough as possible with her for what felt surely like hours before he was satisfied enough to beat her to the nearest point of death he could while keeping her conscious. He always said it was the screaming that made draining his victims of their blood worth it."

Silence didn't stay long enough before Wesley advanced on Fred. He spoke inches away from her face, "All of this while he taunted her; bearing down on her in every emotional way he could before allowing her to die."

Fred had no reply, he didn't back off. "The only thing left is the cuts, the missing skin. I don't know when he peeled off the skin on her arms or her feet or her breasts. I also couldn't tell you at what point he carved the law-firm's famous name into her stomach, but I can tell you she went through hell that surpassed suffering."

She ran out of the room, down the hallway, into the lobby covering her mouth with her hand. He was left alone, with his thoughts. With the guilt and the anger.


End file.
